Celestron CGEM ASCOM Issues

[GC - South Aus]

Hi All

Decided to put this in the beginner area, as the CGEM is new to me and makes me feel like one! :shrug:

Anyways, having real issues connecting my laptop with ASCOM Celestron Driver to the CGEM mount.

Running a Panasonic Toughbook with a built in serial port, Win 7 and latest ASCOM Platform and Celestron Driver. I am connecting the RS232 from the laptop to the nexstar HC. I have also attempted to use a USB Serial cable as well, without luck.

Is anyone else running a similar set up and having success?

So when I try to connect the mount to the ASCOM driver through 'choose a telescope', I continually get an error message and will not connect.

When I try to connect the CGEM with the Celestron NexRemote software program it states it can't find my CGEM. However, I did note that the firmware on the HC is higher than that of NexRemote. But, I have the latest NexRemote program from Celestron site.

When I try to connect the CGEM with Cartes/SkyChart I get no connection.

But, here is the weird thing. I can connect to my mount with the Stellarium program and it works a treat. I don't do anything different same COM port and cable through the HC. :shrug:

I have tried to workshop this by running and changing compatibility modes in Windows, run as administrator, changed every possible COM port on the software.

Just can't get it to work in anything but Stellarium!

Will post some images and error messages later, just wanted to get the ball rolling in case someone had an easy fix.

Any help appreciated.

Cheers

Gav

[ChrisV]

Gav

First - it can work. I control my CGEM mount on a win10 computer, using a serial-USB interface. I have used a win7 laptop in the past - but I never tried ASCOM - only ever direct to Stellarium like you/

I connect to
- Stellarium directly without ASCOM. I also connect to it indirectly via ASCOM with StellariumScope = http://welshdragoncomputing.ca/
- AstrophotographyTool and PHD2 via ASCOM.

So given what you said the problem I assume you have a correct and working cable to the mount. So the problem must be with ASCOM? I haven't used NexRemote so don't know about that. I assume that Cartes uses ASCOM to connect.

When you connect via ASCOM does it come up with the COM port that handles your mount?
Lots of these programs wont connect properly unless the scope has gone through the alignment on the handcontroller.
Also, not all USB-serial interface will work with this (I just can't remember which ones don't).

Sorry I don't have an easy fix without seeing the errors you get.

Chris